Very short story. My 90 year old great-grandmother passed away a couple of months ago. When I had the opportunity to pick something of hers to keep, I chose a glass bowl that I thought was pretty and very different from anything I had. I figured I could put it on my dining room table to remember my granny. This past weekend, we had her estate sale and I was able to talk to my grandmother more about the items she had and she mentioned the carnival glass. I had never heard of carnival glass before, so I came home and looked up information. I'm honestly a little overwhelmed. The bowl I have looks very similar to so many other pieces I see online, but it's MUCH more plain. That's leading me to believe it's nothing more than just a pretty bowl. There are no markings on it that could give me any indication of what it might be (unless I'm an idiot and completely missing it). I had it on my table with fruit in it, but I've since moved it on the off chance it is something more. The pressure that my kids might break it is too much for me to handle until I find out more.

Here's a picture. I know nothing about the bowl. I don't know when she got it, where it came from. All I can tell you is that my granny has lived in NC her entire life, so I have to assume the bowl came from around here.

Hi JT and welcome to the board. It's a little hard to make out what colour your bowl is from the picture as I can see pink, green and a smokey colour. Can you tell me what colour it is please and have you checked on the base to see if there's any maker's mark or number visible?

It's by Federal Glass and is in their Yorktown pattern. Date circa 1950s-60s. It is a pretty bowl and it is something you should treasure for the memories it holds. It's not a big bucks kind of piece, but the up-side of that is that you can feel comfortable using it.

Perhaps owning this bowl will lead you into other Carnival pieces. Good Luck.

It's by Federal Glass and is in their Yorktown pattern. Date circa 1950s-60s. It is a pretty bowl and it is something you should treasure for the memories it holds. It's not a big bucks kind of piece, but the up-side of that is that you can feel comfortable using it.

That's EXACTLY what I wanted to hear!! I didn't want the pressures of owning something worth a lot. I wanted to use it on my table and not stress too much if a kid knocked it over. Thanks for the quick reply

I'm sorry, Anne. I was recovering from a busy weekend and thought the color of the glass was mentioned by Glen. Truth be told, I have no clue what color it is. That was one of the reasons I was having such a hard time figuring anything out. At first I thought blue and then green, but when looking at the colors on one of the many carnival glass websites I ran into, I think it's smoke. These are the other 2 photos I took.

I read that you can usually id the color by looking at the rim, so that's the only reason I think smoke. If you have an idea of how I can figure it out, I'm open to suggestions

The best way to observe the colour of the base glass of a piece of Carnival is to find a part of the item where there is no iridescence. Usually this will be on the collar base or perhaps a stem. Hold it to a good light source and you should be able to determine the colour. I believe your bowl is smoke.

The difficulty with Carnival is that the iridescence affects the base colour, which is why you need to find a part of the glass without iridescence. The pinks and greens on this bowl are almost certainly iridescent effects. I have an amethyst plate that looks green. You wouldn't believe that the base colour was amethyst ....until you hold it to the light and get a glimpse of the actual base colour. The iridescence on it is very heavy and the effect is to make it look rich deep green.

Smoke is not a simple base colour. Generally it also refers to the iridescent effect as well (just to confuse). There are examples of smoke Carnival where the base colour is clear (flint or crystal glass) and the smokey grey effect comes from the iridescence. Then there is also smoke Carnival where the base glass itself is greyish as well.

Hi JT and Glen, thank you both for explaining the colours. JT what you explained is the difficulty I was having with trying to figure it out as no colour seemed to be the dominant one. I know Glen's explained about base colours before but this one had me totally flummoxed. Glen I had no idea that Carnival glass could be a smoke colour, so that's another thing I've learned today, thank you.